


Slumber

by Lunaraen



Category: Minecraft Story Mode
Genre: Blizzards & Snowstorms, Guilt, Potions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 02:43:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8872615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunaraen/pseuds/Lunaraen
Summary: He'd intended for the altered potion to enhance the effects of the base potion of weakness, but had not accounted for how it would react with the winter effects he had already been under. Unusual circumstances and results or not, it had still been caused by a potion, and even at the best of times mixing potion effects could have odd results.





	

They had been expecting snowfall.

After all, a few flurries were only to be expected this time of year. A light snow was the bare minimum, even in the warmer biomes and on what was supposed to be a calmer day. An expedition into a tundra was bound to be accompanied by harsher weather, though they would be exploring the insides of ruins and temples for the better part of it.

However, they hadn't been expecting a full-on blizzard, one that obliterated the milder weather they'd been experiencing. It was only luck, though what kind was up for debate, that they had already been making their way home when it decided to start wreaking havoc.

Ivor had run ahead, ducking around a bend, the others out of his sight as he sprinted.

The temperature couldn't have plummeted as quickly as it did if someone hurled it into a bottomless pit. To make up for the falling temperatures, the wind had picked up, whistling and howling as it wove its way through trees and around bends, more than enough to tug at his clothes and hair.

As he ran, the snow became thicker, almost coming down as an unending, uniform blanket.

It got to the point where he was unable to see more than his hands in the sea of never ending white, and several wrong turns left him little more than stranded as the storm continued to pick up in both speed and ferocity.

Anything that wasn't already buried below the ground would be tossed about in the air, a person standing as much chance as a piece of paper. The paper didn't have to worry about bones shattering when it was hurled into the thick blanket of sleet and ice or off a cliff.

It was, in a word, draining.

Attempting to brave the brunt of the storm was nothing less than suicide.

There were a number of caves about the area, and it was luck the one he chose happened to be uninhabited. Dealing with a grown polar bear would have been tricky, if not doable, but in the end he had no means of cooking anything or creating fire, meaning that any meat he could've salvaged would've grown too cold too quickly and the needed fight would've left him drained of energy he was already low on.

The chill was like a snake that had slipped under his robe, the cold sinking and settling in his bones like a twisted venom as it continued to nip at his fingers.

To say he was cold would be like saying water was not quite dry.

He had no food, no water, and attempting to drink the surrounding snow was likely to leave him dehydrated and with hypothermia, seeing as how he had no practical means of melting and heating it.

The group, assuming they stuck together, which they managed far better than he ever seemed to, would be able to either find or make shelter, given that they didn't reach the city's walls before the storm became any worse.

Ivor's shelter was all that kept him from being dead right now, but while it softened the wind, the cold had no trouble finding him. He didn't have a flint and steel, and he had no potions on hand that would warm him up.

He tended to be well-stocked, but it was a small expedition, and almost all of the few potions he'd thought to bring had been used during the calmer part of the trip. Jesse had been attacked by one of the wandering polar bears after getting too close to its cub, taking care of the small healing potion he hadn't though they'd need to use. Her armor had protected her while she fought it off, but she hadn't made it out without a few deep scratches on her face.

The potion of swiftness had also been taken, courtesy of Lukas and a puzzle that had Soren saying it was a tad too elaborate and complex, and a potion of regeneration had been used on all of them thanks to the unexpected and highly dangerous results of completing the puzzle and unlocking a path to the treasure they'd been trying to find in the first place.

The splash potions that were still left would do him no good. There was little a potions of poison or harming could do, save for speed up what seemed to be the inevitable process of falling to the elements.

Amongst the vials, however, between the empty ones and those with swirling sickly colors, was one he had nearly overlooked.

In his somewhat rushed attempt to flip to an open page, several corners were torn and ripped, his handwriting anything but stable as he jotted a note down. The last time he'd used the potion, he hadn't been expecting the results he got, and the lack of any explanation until after it had worn off had scared the others.

He'd intended for the altered potion to enhance the effects of the base potion of weakness, but had not accounted for how it would react with the winter effects he had already been under. Unusual circumstances and results or not, it had still been caused by a potion, and even at the best of times mixing potion effects could have odd results.

He had collapsed on the spot, not waking until nearly an entire day later. The series of lectures and questions he had received upon waking were enough to make slipping into another deep slumber look appealing.

He wouldn't be able to eat or drink anything, which didn't matter given that he had none on him. His heart rate would slow, as would his breathing,

There was no guarantee that they would find him in time, of course, or that a desperate monster or animal couldn't come across him and attempt to devour him in his weakened state, despite appearing as little more than a corpse, but it was the best option he had. Zombies tended to go after creatures that could scream and run, and if he couldn't move to provoke a polar bear, he wasn't much of a threat. Possible death was better than certain death.

Would death by less violent, less immediate causes be more or less painful?

With any luck, he wouldn't get to know.

He picked up the vial, smooth glass nearly slipping through trembling fingers as he struggled to remove the cork. It felt colder than the blizzard had left him, taste a mixture of liquid metal and ice as it ran across his tongue and down his throat.

It wasn’t a moment later when his head hit the rock wall.

* * *

Dinner had been a quiet affair, Jesse nibbling on half of the bit she'd put on her plate before she'd excused herself, trusting that someone else would eat her food. With the running and fighting they'd done, alongside the freezing temperatures, a good meal was the least they deserved.

(She saw the way they were poking at their food as if it would bite them. They seemed to be steadily making a dent in their meals, at least, and had each taken enough food to be considered a sizable meal.)

Hours ago, the clock had chimed, a hollow clanging that made her look up as it announced midnight. It had been loud, noisier than she remembered it being. With any luck, it hadn't woken anyone up.

Everyone else —well, it was hard to say with Soren, who had simply disappeared from the table before she had and hadn't come back down since— had gone to bed hours ago; they deserved good rest too. They all deserved a number of things, including a better leader.

Jesse wasn't sleeping. Instead, she was partaking in an activity that she was getting more and more experience in with every adventure: feeling guilty.

And she should've. What kind of person just abandoned their teammates, their friends, to the snow and ice without a second thought? She hadn't been thinking, but that was the problem.

He had run ahead of them, disappearing behind the first hill and impossible to see after that thanks to the snow falling both harder and faster, painting the world white and making their own fingers hard to see. She'd thought he'd managed to make it to the walls long before they had, running when they were trudging, and it wasn't until it had become a full on blizzard that they reached the city and found that he still hadn't shown up.

There was nothing they could do to stop the blizzard, now in full swing. They couldn't take more than a couple of steps through it without being just as lost as Ivor was.

Even Ellegaard, who had decided to leave Redstonia for a few days and visit the order, wasn't capable of making a device that could stop the weather. The one thing she could possibly create with that kind of power was something no one dared bring up, if they thought about it.

(Jesse did, of course. Being the one who destroyed the last one made something like that stick, just a bit.)

Every second dragged on, sleep the furthest thing from her mind as she continued to pace in front of the fire, the clock on the wall ticking far too slowly to be accurate.

There was no way of knowing if the weather would be any better when morning came, no way to say whether or not it would last for several more days. It could get worse, but as soon as morning came, she was going outside and finding him, and she'd fight through everyone else to do it.

* * *

Thankfully, it didn't come to that.

The storm died down just as sunlight started to crawl its way over the horizon breaking through the patchy clouds in the brightening sky, and everyone was in their armor and ready to go when it did.

She'd gone over the map herself multiple times, checking every possible area he could be. Ivor was skilled and intelligent, and hopefully lucky, enough to be able to find some sort of shelter from the storm.

The first places to look were the rows of caves and dens, alongside all the caves they hadn't documented, that lined the hills nearest to where they'd last seen him.

They found him in the third cave they tried.

He was somewhere between ashen grey and as white as the snow, as still as the rock he lied on.

If someone's internal injuries were bad enough, from a nasty fall or a bad blow, or if they overheated, or if they froze because they'd been abandoned in a blizzard... it could take several hours for the body to vanish, and if it took longer, they were likely to spawn as a skeleton or zombie. Most people didn't die that way, but it wasn't like Jesse could claim she hadn't seen it happen before.

All three times now it had been her fault.

Her shoulders slumped as she tilted her head back, tearing streaming down her cheeks.

"Jesse."

Soren's hand was on her shoulder, but it was what was in his other hand that interested her. The spine of the journal seemed to have been broken, mangled enough that the pages didn't bother to try flipping over the ones the journal had been left open on. The handwriting was familiar, if shaky, a corner of the page falling victim to the snow that was on her fingers as she took the worn, offered book out of his hand.

Her vision was somewhat blurry, even as she continued to wipe at her eyes, but she managed to read it all the same. She read it a few times before the journal was left dangling from her limp hand as she looked back at Ivor.

His chest was moving, ever so slowly rising and falling. Still, just because he took the potion didn't mean he'd be okay. They needed to get him back home and warm him up, and the sooner the better. There was no telling what damage the cold had already done.

Jesse picked Ivor up, wrapping an arm around his middle and putting his arm around her shoulders as she lifted him, an icicle in every way, onto his feet, only to be stopped before she could take a step to the cave's entrance.

"I got him."

Jesse opened her mouth, shutting it a moment later with a nod and a smile that was hard to hold for a few moments, even though it was small. Axel held Ivor upright as she let go and pulled away from Ivor, his arm falling back to his side in an instant. Axel lifted Ivor entirely off of the ground, holding him like he was a sack of resources across his shoulders.

After months of adventures, it seemed like Ivor was always moving, even when he was sitting. He was always writing in some journal or other when he wasn't working on new potions, and when he slept he moved, chest rising and falling. He wasn't supposed to be so limp. He wasn't supposed to feel like an ice block.

Then again, he wasn't supposed to have been left behind in a blizzard, either.

The numb feeling inside of her chest that had come with finding him on the ground didn't fade as they made the trek back home, all but running through the snow, what with no storm to slow them. Axel and Petra took turns carrying Ivor, but that was the only time they slowed, and she couldn't blame them.

They should've brought along a cart. It would've made carrying Ivor easier, and taking turns carrying him wouldn't slow them down.

Of course, when they'd left, she's thought about bringing a cart. Again, she screwed up. But at the time, taking along one had seemed more like an admission that they intended to use it as a means to bring a body home, not a friend.

The thought made her run faster.

* * *

Ivor came to a conclusion as his mind poked its way into awareness, rising from the murky depths that came with sleep.

He was delusional.

Well, it was foolish to think the potion would save him from everything.

The rock and ice he had been leaning against was gone, his fingers numb enough that they felt warm. He could smell smoke, twitching fingers brushing against something soft. In fact, he found as he shifted, there was something soft wrapped around him.

Ivor grumbled, muffled and short sounds made not for the sake of speaking any actual words or sentences so much as to make noise.

He was lying on what could best be described as a nest of blankets, several of them wrapped around and draped across him.

Most importantly, there was a warm body next to him, Jesse's gaze not drifting from him even as her shoulders relaxed.

Not delusional, then. Just ridiculously lucky.

"...Jesse?"

He attempted to croak out her name, and was promptly tackled, her arms wrapping around him as she began to speak, not pausing between rushed apologies and an explanation that was interrupted by several more apologies and a few loud calls for the others.


End file.
